The Incredible Machine

(Extinction of a Man)

By George David Thomas

He ran through all the days of his life, trying to find one on which he had seen something like this, but still in all those days, it seemed there were none the same. Due to a defect in his left lung though, he had never been in the army, and he had heard the army had some really special machines. Perhaps it was gun, or a rocket launcher. That was a possibility. The big hoses would deliver the ammunition, hundreds of rounds of it, and then the steel beams would fold out to provide the stand upon which the barrel would sit, whilst the cab would turn around so that the driver became the gunner. Yes, it was certainly a possibility, and now it was close to him he could see the barrel on the back, a huge cylinder facing backwards, easily big enough for the bullets to kill a thousand men, or even more.

For a slow series of split seconds, he was sure that he was right, but then he realised that of course all that was complete nonsense. The army did not drive machines that were painted in red and orange and yellow. He was no closer to resolving the puzzle, and the big machine was almost upon him, whilst the fog was thicker than ever. He was transfixed now with the outline of what looked like a ladder, climbing up the side of the big cylinder on the back, but then leading away into the sky, and away to nowhere. That almost made John Brown smile a weary smile. A ladder to the sky!

He had seen firefighters climbing into the sky, in the pictures in the Cumbernauld Gazette, when the big box factory at Balloch had burned down. The engines had been too small though, and nothing had been saved. Eighty thousand cardboard boxes, and the livelihoods of forty six people had gone up in smoke that night. If they’d had a fire engine of this size on the site though, he thought they’d have had a much better chance. And then when he remembered some of the other places that could set on fire, like the refineries over at Grangemouth, it didn’t even bear thinking about. An industrial fire engine was almost certainly what the machine must be.

It really was very slow though, and even if it was parked right next to where the oil refinery was going to go on fire, those tentacles would have to reach a long way to be of much use, and maybe they too would be on fire before the fire fighters even arrived. Ach, no, it couldn’t be that. He was getting frustrated now. In his life as a working man John Brown really had seen a lot of machines, and he ran through them now hopelessly, trying to find one that would fit. A giant woodchipper maybe, or a boat lift, or a drain cleaner, or a hole digger, or a demolition grab, a cherry picker perhaps, or a portable oil well. No, it was none of those.

Then something new caught his eye. There was an oddly shaped protrusion on the front corner of the machine that he had not noticed before. It was only small, but a working man’s instinct told him it was important, and he was almost sure it would be the final detail that would provide the solution he was looking for. His eyesight was not what it had once been though, and the fog continued to lift and then fall, so that the shapes came towards him sometimes in colour, and sometimes just as ghostly white and grey outlines. And now, with the same cruel hand that luck had dealt him throughout his life, it was thicker than ever, just at the moment of course when all he needed to do was to be able to see the final piece of the puzzle more clearly.

He was right in his instinct though, he was sure of that, and as it came very close he could see that there was writing on the metal plate that had caught his eye. He could hardly bear the tension and suspense as the fuzzy black symbols crystallised slowly into letters that he could recognise, but eventually the words did indeed appear, and he was able to read quite clearly both the purpose and the name of the incredible machine that had puzzled him so completely. There was a moment where he felt disappointed to know that something so incredible could be made for the simple purpose of doing something so mundane, but the moment didn’t last long, before he realised that the machine was now very close upon him. It was in fact, very close indeed.

And then there was nothing. The incredible machine rolled on, slow and sure towards Kilsyth and its destination beyond, cold and proud in its purpose, and unaware always of the fate of the man John Brown beneath it. The mist stayed low over the fields right up until dark, when the woman at the cottages came out to take the clothes in again, still damp, and the cripples were wheeled back into the hospital on the hill. John Brown’s sister Jean sometimes wondered why her brother no longer came to visit, but she never asked, and the milestone held its silence. On cold October mornings though, the ghost of John Brown still stands on the road between Kirkintilloch and Kilsyth, silently wondering at the meaning of it all.